[Portfolio] – elAndysimo, 3D Artist/World design

elAndysimo

Hi all! So I finally joined after many months of lurking and salivating at the art and I would like to ask for critiques of my portfolio. Critique the site, critique my work, hell, critique the picture I have uploaded of myself. Thanks in advance!

www.andyhv.com

samcole

courtesy bump.

CandyStripes05

most people would recommend not having a picture of yourself (or an about section completely). this way viewers just judge your work and not you - leave that for the interview : )

the video/game trailer is nice, im guessing it was a team project of sorts - so not entirely your work.. meaning it would be nice to see a demo reel that is 100% your stuff

you need more breakdowns and polycounts of different environment pieces, and should also put your best work at the top of the gallery page. by providing breakdowns it'll help show off what part of the level you worked on since most of your gallery is team project stuff

also, in your home page slideshow you have a sculpt that cant be found elsewhere. i usually like to think of those slideshows as a preview to the site and often hope to find whats in there elsewhere with links to higher res/breakdowns etc (just an example)

thats it from me, food for thought. good luck on your site ! : )

elAndysimo

Thanks sam for the bump, and thank you CandyStripes for the critique.
I have been postponing working on my reel under the excuse that I want to add the next piece Im working on each time, but the reel is being completed as we speak, write, whatever. And thanks for pointing out the missing sculpt, I could have sworn it was up.
The project in the video was indeed a group project, but I have a hard time showing off what I did. For the project, I did most of the set dressing. We had enough artists to go around, so I moved to using the pieces they made to build the scenes. Any suggestions on how to show that?

samcole

Andy, there was a portfolio I saw where the guy took a still image of the scene and color coded the things he/she contributed, and what he/she didn't contribute, or didn't create was left uncolored. Then he put in text under the image what the colors meant..so on..etc. How you pull that off in a 1 minute demo reel, hard to say. But at least you could display it that way in your gallery so that way if people are curious after watching the reel they can find out there.

If I can find the website I'm referencing I'll link it here so you can see it.

CandyStripes05

that sounds like a good idea, show the image then fade into the paintover version and do subs maybe at the bottom when the paintover is up to explain what you contributed to that particular piece - but very very brief and straight to the point this way the viewer still spends more time looking at the art rather then reading. i suppose if you do a few of them in a row while leaving the caption up itll give them time to both enjoy the images as well as read your explanation (keeping the caption the same over all the paintover images)

but that is totally your call

Darkmaster

I think that one thing you could really work on overall here is defining your materials. The more I look at your individual assets, the more I think that really dialing in your specs will really tie things together better. There are a couple shots where your materials don't even appear to have any specular value at all. Keep workin it man!

elAndysimo

I'll try that color coding on stills, it just might be crazy enough to work! On the video, I guess I'll just provide a quick explanation, or have a footnote through the images.

@Darkmaster, Until fairly recent, I was doing spec maps completely wrong. Would you mind pointing out the asset you believe to be the worst offender, so I can try and fix it? I mean, I'll go back to all, of course.